


Dr Junmyeon Kim’s Guide to Rare Mountain Plant Species

by deoxyribonucleotide



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Botany, First Meetings, Gen, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Pre-Slash, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:28:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27228100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deoxyribonucleotide/pseuds/deoxyribonucleotide
Summary: Junmyeon joins an expedition to study the native plant species on Mt. Jiri. What—or rather, who—he finds there is more interesting than anything he’s ever encountered in the field.
Relationships: Kim Junmyeon | Suho/Oh Sehun
Comments: 6
Kudos: 37
Collections: Round 2: SeHo in a Song





	Dr Junmyeon Kim’s Guide to Rare Mountain Plant Species

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the fic moderators for organizing this fic fest, and for still being with me even after I changed my story twice (lol). Thank you to my friend K as well for being my fic beta. Hi, prompter! I hope this comes close to what you envisioned.
> 
> Full disclosure: I only have a very basic background in botany, let alone field botany. Nearly all of my knowledge comes from online guides and journal articles, but I tried my best to make this realistic. I apologize for any errors in the fic.
> 
> Prompt #SH-20  
>  _Nature Boy_ by Nat King Cole

Mt. Jiri has a peak elevation of 1,915 meters above sea level. Junmyeon’s altimeter tells him that they’re only a third of that from the mountain’s highest point. From this height, the view of the sunset is spectacular—something like a fire painted onto the canvas of the wide blue sky, nearly cloudless save for some flat stratus clouds at the edge of Junmyeon’s vision.

He and Chanyeol, a colleague and a friend, are finishing up a day of sample collection for their expedition. The two of them are field botanists, and as the name of their profession suggests, their job includes going out into the field and identifying novel plant species. This task has brought them to Mt. Jiri to survey the plants distributed in the cool temperate zone—that is, the plants that live between 400 to 1,400 meters above sea level.

They have to make it back to camp before sundown, after which point navigating the hilly and forested terrain becomes that much harder of a task. Their camp is a good distance away, but not far enough that the two of them aren’t used to the trip. After all, they already are a good week into their expedition, and all the other ones they’ve had in the past guide their descent down the mountain.

It’s when they come out of a particular dense tree line that Chanyeol says, “Oh, Junmyeon-hyung. I forgot—Dr Jung told me to check something here? He gave me some coordinates yesterday, told me to look for something like a _Trientalis europaea_ but with pinnately instead of palmately compound leaves.”

“Should I wait for you here, Yeol?” Junmyeon asks, looking around the glade.

Chanyeol shakes his head. “Nah. Can we meet here instead?” He writes something in a leaf of his steno notepad before tearing it out and handing it to Junmyeon, who sticks it into a pocket of his vest. “Just a little further down. I’ll be quick, hyung, don’t worry.”

“Alright,” says Junmyeon, watching Chanyeol go.

He doesn’t want to stay in the glade doing nothing, so he decides to do a little more exploration of his own. ‘Quick’ to Chanyeol means fifteen minutes, instead of something reasonable like five, all the more time for Junmyeon to do his own thing. He knows this part of the mountain like the back of his hand, anyway, with how frequently they’ve visited it in the past few days.

Junmyeon climbs down to the opposite edge of the glade. This is a patch of the forest that Chanyeol has combed more frequently than he has, so he decides it’s a good time to give it an inspection of his own. As he makes his way down, he listens to the wind whistle through the leaves in the trees. It’s awful cold, turning the tip of his nose numb, but he continues.

A few more minutes of walking leads Junmyeon to a tree unlike any of the ones surrounding it. Most striking of all, the tree stands taller than the rest of the forest, jutting up into the sky, its gnarled brown branches looking like outstretched hands. Its leaves are so bright green that they look artificial, like the plastic trees that Junmyeon finds on sale at Christmastime. The flowers on the tree are a vivid red, the color of blood as he remembers it from his few animal lab classes.

Simply put, this tree does not look like it belongs in the forest—it doesn’t even look like it belongs on Earth. The tree’s strangely saturated coloration makes it seem mysterious and alien.

Undiscovered.

Junmyeon takes the pruner out of his backpack.

He looks for a small branch within his reach and, funnily enough, for all that the tree is tall and mighty, there is one, but only if Junmyeon stands on the tips of his toes. Belatedly wishing Chanyeol were here with him, Junmyeon holds on to the branch with his left hand while angling the pruner with his right.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” says a wry voice.

“Huh?” Junmyeon pauses from his work. He can hear a voice, but there’s no one around. “Who’s there?”

“Me.”

What happens next is something Junmyeon never could have foreseen: the bark of the strange tree before him bends and ripples as a man comes out of it, almost as if he’s peeling himself away from the wood.

“What the fuck!” cries Junmyeon, the pruner falling out of his grip. He stares, uncomprehendingly, at the man before him.

If Junmyeon could even call him a man, that is. Certainly normal men do not come out of trees, and they typically do not have skin the color and texture of sapwood. Nor do they have eyes that vivid green, or hair that looked more like a crown of leaves than hair at all.

Normal men are never this handsome, either. The man—or perhaps more accurately, the being—has austere features, all sharp lines and angles. A strong brow and a sharp nose, lips set into a straight line—all of these combined have the effect of making him as intimidating as he is beautiful. And as Junmyeon’s eyes travel involuntarily down the being’s tall, half-naked form, he finds that the being is impossibly well-built, too. A Greek statue, but rendered in wood instead of marble.

“What the fuck,” Junmyeon says again, but this time is for a different reason than the first.

“Hey, no swearing here,” the being says, wrinkling his nose. “Some of the kids might hear you.”

From the corner of Junmyeon’s eye, one of the trees—a smaller one—seems to ripple much in the same way as the tree in front of him had a minute ago.

“Ah, this is why we usually have the barriers up,” the being laments, shaking his head. His sharp features seem to dull in the face of his disappointment. “We don’t want the kids to be around bad influences, see?”

“I’m sorry,” splutters Junmyeon, rather taken aback. In all his thirty years of life, he has probably been called a bad influence only once or twice. Most people’s opinion of him was that he was too normal and enduring, too rigid and fixed. For a presumably supernatural entity to call him a bad influence—it’s a bit of a shock, to say the least. “I’ll just… leave now….”

Junmyeon starts to retreat, already thinking about how he’s supposed to explain this to Dr Jung and the rest of the team. Perhaps this encounter didn’t even take place, it merely being a hallucination caused by the thin mountain air.

The hand on Junmyeon’s jacketed arm feels real enough, though, when the being holds him to forestall his departure.

“No, it’s fine,” the being says. His green eyes flicker up to Junmyeon’s face. “Actually—if it isn’t any trouble, can you stay for a while? It’s been a decade, I think, since I last talked to a human.”

“A-alright,” Junmyeon replies, caught off-guard but grateful at the being’s sudden change in demeanor. For some reason, he doesn’t want to go either. Of course, a part of it is rooted in fear—what would the being do if he refused? He doesn’t want to leave and find out.

A greater part, however, is sheer curiosity. Junmyeon is a botanist through and through; he wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to _talk_ to a plant. Or rather, a plant-based being. He can hardly comprehend the specifics, but still he wants to stay.

The ground is wet and grassy, so Junmyeon sits on a tree trunk that’s fallen over, careful to avoid any obvious patches of lichen.

“I’m Sehun,” says the being, sitting a short distance away from him. Right on the lichen, too. “What’s your name?”

“Junmyeon,” he answers, “it’s… um. It’s nice to meet you.”

“I gave you a bit of a shock earlier, didn’t I?” Sehun asks, a mischievous smile playing on his lips. They’re green, too, but of a darker shade than his eyes. “Sorry about that. I didn’t know what it was that you were holding, so….”

“Oh, this?” Junmyeon picks up the pruner that had fallen to the ground. “It’s just a pruner. We use it to collect branches, leaves, and such for studying.”

“I see,” Sehun says. He extends his hand toward the pruner. “May I?”

Junmyeon nods, giving it to Sehun.

He turns the pruner over in his hands, eyeing it with absolute focus. He runs a hand over the metal of the blade but doesn’t do much more than that. When he’s satisfied with his inspection, he hands the instrument back to Junmyeon, who then wipes the tool with a towel before stowing them both in his backpack.

For a long moment, Sehun regards Junmyeon with the same curious green gaze that he’d afforded the pruner. He seems to take in Junmyeon—the dirt on his face and hands, his multiple layers of clothes—before he asks, “What are you doing here, Junmyeon?”

“I’m here with a team of other people to collect plant samples in this zone of Mt. Jiri,” Junmyeon says. “Other teams have gone up in the past, so what we’re mostly doing is confirmatory in nature. Going over the things they missed, tying up loose ends, things like that. I think your tree is a new species, though, which is why I wanted a branch. Um, sorry again.”

“It’s fine,” Sehun says, waving his apology off. “You’re a scientist, I take it? Not some run-of-the-mill mountaineer?” He points at the logo on Junmyeon’s vest.

“Yes. A field botanist, to be specific,” answers Junmyeon. He forgets, sometimes, what he’s wearing and who he’s representing when he comes out on these expeditions. It sounds rather unprofessional, but whenever Junmyeon is out in the field, he is above all the same curious little kid he was before, eager to learn everything about the plants in a particular place. On the outcrops of Mt. Jiri, he’s not Dr Junmyeon Kim, a research fellow who’s had multiple papers published in high-impact factor publications, he’s just Junmyeon, the kid who started collecting flowers at the tender age of three.

Sehun narrows his eyes at him. “How do I know you’re not going to do something bad? We had a team of those scientists here before, too.” His face, so open a minute ago, has become austere again. “Imagine our surprise when the part of the mountain that they visited got cut down and almost turned into some ski resort.”

Junmyeon gulps. He’s heard of that happening. Some scheming entrepreneurs saw the success of the Winter Olympics and decided that a ski resort-cum-commercial complex would be a great boon to their profits. After a hastily done—and likely paid for under the table—environmental assessment, the entrepreneurs contracted a firm to clear a section of the mountain. The project, given its location in a protected area of Mt. Jiri, drew heavy criticism in the time it was underway. Only after a lengthy battle in the courts did the entrepreneurs pull out, but at that point, the damage had already been done.

Jaw set stiffly, Sehun asks, “How do I know I’m not supposed to throw you off the mountain right now?”

“Please don’t throw me off the mountain, I have samples of possibly unknown plants in my backpack,” pleads Junmyeon. If he dies now, he’s going to take a whole lot of scientific knowledge with him, and if at all possible, he would like for that not to happen. 

Junmyeon’s stupid answer startles a laugh out of Sehun. “Samples?” he asks, sounding curious instead of angry. “May I see them?”

“Sure,” says Junmyeon. His hands shake slightly as he unzips the main compartment of his backpack. Sehun has once again gone from intimidating to friendly in such a short span of time, leaving him with a sense of whiplash. This is the sort of unpredictability that he doesn’t have experience in. Plants, even when alive, are rarely vigorous enough to surprise him. Chanyeol is the only friend he has that seems excited enough, most of the time, and yet even he can’t hold a candle to Sehun’s mercurial shifts in mood.

Junmyeon pulls out a plastic vial holding a small branch with glossy green leaves and white flowers, hoping Sehun wouldn’t take offense as he says, “Just don’t open it, please. I’d rather not lose any of my samples today.”

Sehun takes the vial from him. “Ah, this one,” he says, holding it up until it’s at his eye level. “What do humans call this?”

“ _Rhododendron tschonoskii,_ ” Junmyeon answers easily. “I think. I’m following the key Dr Byun published a year ago, and he’d identified it as such. But for all we know, it could be a different, previously unknown plant that just looks eerily similar to it, and that’s why I’m bringing it back to the lab for analysis.”

“ _Rhododendron tschonoskii?_ What a weird name that is.”

“Tell me about it,” Junmyeon says, laughing. “Do you have a name for this, Sehun?”

Sehun makes a series of clicking and rolling noises that resemble no language Junmyeon has ever heard. He must be making a face, because Sehun chuckles. “Too hard to pronounce?”

“I’ll stick with _R. tschonoskii_ , I think,” says Junmyeon.

Sehun gives the vial back to him. “Hand me another one of your samples.”

And so Junmyeon does. Sehun asks him about the flowers, fruits, seeds, and leaves that he’s collected over the trip, so Junmyeon tells him what he knows about them. Sehun tells him, too, what he knows about the plants in Junmyeon’s vials. Some of the things he says don’t reside in the realm of conventional knowledge—for one, he tells Junmyeon that the _Cacalia_ he has can be used in a ritual to summon snow—but they are definitely interesting. In any case, Junmyeon is not foolish enough to argue with a supernatural being on the topic of botany. He’s hopelessly out of his depth here.

At the beginning of their conversation, Junmyeon had felt a bit like a criminal arguing his case in court, or perhaps a mouse attempting to reason with a cat. Little by little, the feeling has gone away, and as he trades snippets of information with Sehun he achieves a rather profound sense of relaxation. Sehun is pleasant and intelligent, and not only does he know a lot about plants, he loves them, too. Junmyeon spends a lot of time with people who love plants—that’s just the nature of his work. But he himself cannot come up to the shine in Sehun’s eyes, the joy that makes itself known by the smile on Sehun’s lips. The sheer enthusiasm that seems to make his sapwood skin glow, turning him more handsome than he already is.

Junmyeon feels himself become more and more endeared.

Before he knows it, they’re almost through with all his samples. The one he’s holding is the last he has, a small branch with a yellow flower and fine, scallop-edged leaves. He’d collected it from a squat shrub he spotted on the way up. The shrub had caught his attention because it, like Sehun’s tree, seemed unlike the rest of its neighbors.

As he hands the vial over, Sehun’s eyes widen as they land on its contents.

“Oh no,” Junmyeon says in reflex. “Is that plant, um, sacred in your culture? Should I not have taken it? I’m sorry, if I had known, I wouldn’t have—”

Sehun holds the vial up. Sunlight shines through the plastic walls, bringing the fine-grained texture of the petals into clearer view. “Tell me, Junmyeon. What color are the flower’s petals to you?”

Junmyeon pauses. _Is this a trick question?_ “They’re yellow,” he says, stating the obvious. Thinking a little bit more on it, he adds, “Okay, maybe a bit closer to gold, if you need to be specific. But not _too_ gold, it’s a bit lighter than that—”

“That’s enough,” says Sehun. “They’re yellow? Even when I do this?” Sehun throws the vial up lightly.

“Please don’t throw the samples around!”

Sehun laughs, melodious and sweet. Instead of the vial rising and then falling to the ground, it hovers a few inches above his palm, suspended in some strange magical field. “Answer my question, Junmyeon.”

The petals of the flower flutter slightly. Junmyeon stares at it like he has never stared at a flower before.

“It’s still yellow, yes,” he replies after some time. “It got… I think it got a bit _darker_ after you did… whatever it is that you did, but aside from that, it’s the same color I saw earlier.”

“Okay,” Sehun says. The vial falls back into his palm. “I guess I’m not throwing you off the mountain, then.”

“What?” asks Junmyeon, bemused at the sharp turn their conversation has taken. He’s starting to get used to the feeling with how many times it’s cropped up in the past hour. “I… Thank you, Sehun. May I ask what makes you say so?”

“What do you call this flower in your native language?” Sehun trades a question for a question.

“We don’t have a name for it yet,” Junmyeon says. “Or if we do, I’m not aware of it. This flower… it doesn’t match any of the species on Dr Byun’s key. I’m hoping it’s a previously undiscovered species that can only be found on this part of Mt. Jiri, but I can only be sure after further analysis in the lab and comparison with other samples in our herbarium. Maybe someone else has already discovered it—on another part of Mt. Jiri or in a different place altogether.”

Turning the vial over in his hand, Sehun states, “I’m betting that it’s a previously undiscovered species.”

“Oh,” says Junmyeon. The note of confidence in Sehun’s voice makes him feel rather pleased. “That’s good to hear, then.”

“Because this flower doesn’t just show itself to anyone, and I’m honestly shocked that you were able to collect a sample of it.”

“What?”

Sehun makes a series of complicated clicks and trills. “That’s what we call this plant in our language. It represents sincerity. Earnestness. Dedication to a noble purpose. You’re right in your guess—you can only find this plant in this part of the mountain. It’s a rather shy plant. It hides from everyone—especially you humans—most of the time.”

“I see,” Junmyeon says, unable to process the information. _What did Sehun mean by that? The plant hid from people?_ He imagines the plant makes use of chemosensing to discriminate between whom to hide from and whom to show itself. But the specificity with which it accomplished that—not to mention how it hides in the first place—is something Junmyeon cannot understand. Those aren’t things that a common plant would do. It’s more than likely that the plant is magical, in which case its mechanisms are completely outside of Junmyeon’s purview.

“Sometimes the plant makes mistakes, of course,” Sehun adds. “Nothing in the world is perfect. Sometimes it shows itself even when it’s not supposed to, so I had to ask you what color you saw the flower as to make sure.”

“Make sure that you weren’t supposed to throw me off the mountain?”

“Er, yes.” Sehun says, wincing. “Most humans see the flower as red. That’s the average answer. Some will see it as purple, or even black… if this flower showed itself to that team of scientists who helped to cut down our beloved forests all those years ago, I’m betting that’s what they would have seen.”

“Oh,” says Junmyeon, the pieces falling into place.

“But you saw it as yellow, Junmyeon,” Sehun says, and if he was happy talking about his plants a while ago, he sounds positively elated now. “I’m sure you can figure out why that’s a good thing. This isn’t even color theory, it’s just simple pattern recognition.”

Junmyeon takes some time to get his thoughts together. “People—okay, not just people but beings—perceive the color of the flower differently? And the closer to yellow someone sees the flower, the more sincere they are?”

“The closer to white, actually,” corrects Sehun, “but since you’re just human, some allowances have to be made. But this is good! Really good. You didn’t see scarlet or orange, but yellow. That’s impressive.”

“Um…, thank you?” Hearing someone affirm his character so readily makes Junmyeon feel rather flustered. Though it is entirely possible, too, that the pinkness of his face has more to do with how it’s Sehun doing it. Junmyeon thinks Sehun could point out the color of his eyes and still make him blush.

“So you must like your work a lot, huh,” Sehun says, a soft smile on his face.

“Yes,” Junmyeon replies. “I honestly think I could do this for the rest of my life, and it would be a life well lived.”

“How long have you been studying plants, Junmyeon?”

Junmyeon has to think about it a little bit. “I’ve been collecting plants from the age of three—I think that counts as a certain type of studying. But if we’re speaking with regard to formal education only, I’ve been studying plants for ten years now, give or take.”

“Collecting, especially in an organized manner, is studying,” Sehun says with a nod, making Junmyeon’s cheeks feel warm again. “But tell me more about how humans formally investigate plants. The scientists I met before weren’t as forthcoming or kind as you are, so I’m hoping you could let me know.”

And so Junmyeon does, starting from how they collect plant samples in the field and how they keep the plants over a long period of time. He tells Sehun about the plant presses that they use at the end of every day, the 75% ethanol they use to preserve fruits and flowers. He goes over how they collect samples for DNA analysis, too, as well as a brief overview of how the process is used to determine whether a species is new or not. Sehun seems interested in DNA, in how each plant—and each living being, really—has an invisible marker that could give clues as to its identity.

After some time, and a few more curious questions from Sehun, they end up on the topic of Junmyeon’s life rather than his work. Junmyeon talks about a childhood spent in his grandparents’ farm in Suncheon, something he’d grow to miss when he and his parents moved to Seoul a few years later. It’s probably his childhood that inspired him to become a botanist in the first place, and he tells Sehun about the steps he took to achieve this dream: getting into a good college, pursuing a degree in biology, and then earning a master’s degree and doctorate in field botany and systematics.

Junmyeon would love to stay and talk more, learn about Sehun and his world, too, but a voice coming out of his walkie-talkie tears him out of the moment. Apologizing briefly to Sehun, he pulls the walkie-talkie out of his pocket and speaks into its mic. “This is Junmyeon speaking.”

“Hey hyung,” starts Chanyeol, “sorry to keep you waiting. Let’s meet at the coordinates I gave you, yeah?”

Junmyeon frowns, but still says, “Alright. Give me a few more minutes to finish things up here, then I’ll come down.”

“Will do. See you in a bit, hyung.”

Junmyeon slots his walkie-talkie back into his pocket. He smiles apologetically at Sehun. “Sorry, Sehun, but I think I have to go. My friend is already looking for me, and I’d rather not have him worry too much. Yeollie’s bit of a worrier, see.”

“That’s okay,” Sehun says, standing up. “I can walk you to the tree line, if you want.”

“That would be nice, thank you.”

“Is your backpack heavy?” Sehun asks, eyeing Junmyeon worriedly as he gets to his feet.

“Yes, but it’s something that I’m used to,” answers Junmyeon. He’s had years of practice as a field botanist; now his back barely even hurt. Or perhaps he’s just become numb to the pain.

Sehun holds his arms out. “Give that to me, then. I’ll carry it for you.”

“Oh, no,” Junmyeon cries, feeling shy again. “I don’t think I can ask you to—”

“Junmyeon, please,” replies Sehun, sounding somewhat exasperated. “I am magic. I’ll just make it float.”

“Oh. Right. Hold on.” _Well, isn’t this embarrassing._ Junmyeon passes his backpack off to Sehun, who only has to touch it with an open palm to make it float at waist height. It trails beside them as they walk down the unmarked path, bobbing slightly as if it were in sloshing water.

They’re walking through the glade when Sehun turns to Junmyeon and asks, “Junmyeon, can you do me a favor?”

“What is it?”

“Show the flower to your team. The one whose petals you saw as yellow. After you press and preserve it and all that, show it to your team. If any of them tell you they see purple—or worse, black—please throw them off the mountain for me.”

Junmyeon blinks. Sehun’s tone, completely free of inflection, has him confused whether the remark is serious or not. “I can show them the flower, Sehun, but I don’t think that I can throw them off the mountain for you. Murder is a crime where I’m from.”

“Oh, that’s a shame,” replies Sehun with a disappointed tut. “Ah, but can you tell me anyway? I’m sure no one would mourn the loss of someone who saw purple. It’s for the good of all, to be honest.”

“For your sake and mine, I sincerely hope all of us get at least red,” Junmyeon says, hoping the smile on his face comes off as easy-going instead of anxious.

Sehun laughs. “I wouldn’t hold my breath, Junmyeon, but I like the optimism.”

They reach the tree line after a few more minutes of walking, and already Junmyeon’s heart feels heavy with the impending goodbye. Is he stupid for wanting to spend even just a bit more time with Sehun? He gets the feeling that Sehun is special, and that isn’t only because he had magical powers.

Chanyeol is waiting for him, though, and it’s that thought that pushes him to say, “Well, I guess this is me.”

“I hope we get to talk more, the next time we meet,” Sehun says. He hands Junmyeon’s backpack to him.

Tugging the straps on, Junmyeon asks, “The next time we meet?”

“Ah, I’m sorry for assuming. I just thought that it would be nice if we could have a little chat again. Consider it….” Sehun pauses in thought, pouting slightly, “something like an insider account of the plants and things on this part of the mountain.”

“That does make sense,” Junmyeon agrees. Most likely, he wouldn’t be able to publish the things Sehun told him, but they were interesting enough that they needed no further recognition aside from being heard. Aside from that, though, he wanted to learn more about Sehun as well. He must have talked Sehun’s ear off this afternoon. The next time around, he’ll be the one listening.

“And besides,” adds Sehun, “It’s not every day I meet someone like you. I think you’re interesting, Junmyeon.”

There it is again, that shy feeling Junmyeon got when Sehun talked about him like that. “I think you’re interesting too, Sehun.”

“Not every day I meet someone this cute, too,” Sehun says, a smirk on his handsome face.

When Sehun takes Junmyeon’s hand in his own, Junmyeon’s brain screeches to a halt. “What—?”

“See you around, Junmyeon,” says Sehun, gracefully walking away. “If you want to talk again, you know where to find me.”

Junmyeon watches, stunned, as Sehun lets his hand go before slinking into the thickness of trees. The moment he blinks, Sehun disappears from his sight.

He stands there for some time, wondering if the past hour or so had truly happened. He makes a fist with the hand Sehun held, only to feel his fingers close around something.

It’s a red flower, one that Junmyeon recognizes as having come from Sehun’s tree. Junmyeon contemplates whether or not to add this particular specimen to their herbarium before deciding against it. He’ll preserve it, yes, but he won’t show it to anyone else. He hopes the gods of botany forgive him, but he’d like to keep this one thing to himself just this once.

He follows the coordinates to their meeting place, finding Chanyeol there, hunched over a short shrub with small and glossy leaves. “Hey, Yeol.”

“Oh, there you are, hyung,” says Chanyeol, straightening up. “Ready to head back?”

“Yep.”

The two of them make their way down the trail, the slope gradually becoming gentler the further they go. Chanyeol leads the way, humming under his breath a cheery song that Junmyeon thinks is from an idol group. On this path, all the plants Junmyeon sees are ones he already recognizes. So he looks up into the sky instead and is surprised to find virtually the same fire painted across it.

“By the way, how long were we apart, Yeol?” Junmyeon asks conversationally.

Chanyeol stops humming to check his watch. “Uh, sixteen minutes. See, it wasn’t that long.”

“Ah.” Somehow, Junmyeon had expected the answer. Of course Sehun would be able to fit an hour-long conversation into sixteen minutes. The thought doesn’t even feel out of place.

“Find anything interesting today, hyung?” 

“Oh, yes, definitely,” Junmyeon answers. Chanyeol is likely expecting him to go into a tangent about a plant, but funnily enough, that’s the furthest thing from his mind. Sehun has pushed everything else aside.

“I can’t wait until we’re back at camp,” says Chanyeol. “My legs are killing me, and I really want to compare notes with everyone.”

“I can’t wait, either,” replies Junmyeon, but it’s for a different reason entirely.

When they arrive, the first thing Junmyeon does is find an empty jar, some ethanol, and a roll of masking tape—the things he needs to preserve a flower. He fills the jar halfway with ethanol, and then drops Sehun’s flower into it. As he closes the airtight lid, further securing it with the tape, he wonders if it would be too soon to talk to him again tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> I took _Nature Boy_ a little too literally, I think, but I had fun.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
